Flooding knocks Five Points post office out of commission

A few people wore confused looks on their faces as they approached the door of the post office in Five Points Thursday morning.

No one was moving around inside. The lights were off. A chain and lock hung from the door handles. Those who peered through the glass windows could see that the bottom two feet or so of the inside walls had been torn out.

It didn’t take long before they realized the office is still closed after the historic rains and floods that inundated South Carolina on Oct. 4. And it will be out of commission for a while longer, said Harry Spratlin, a district communications coordinator for the U.S. Postal Service.

Five Points, which generally floods with heavy rains, didn’t feel the brunt of October’s powerful rainstorm. But up to two inches of water flooded through the post office, Spratlin said.

Rocky Branch runs through Martin Luther King Jr. Park, about a half-block away from the post office.

“It didn’t come gushing in there like it might have with a dam being burst,” Spratlin said. “It was just a steady rise.”

No equipment, furniture or mail was damaged or lost, but the Postal Service will have to repair or replace damaged walls and flooring, Spratlin said. Mold developed two weeks after the flood, he said.

The process of cleaning up the building and preparing for re-opening has been time-consuming because U.S. Postal Service buildings must adhere to “strict federal structural and environmental requirements,” according to a letter from Columbia Postmaster Walt Rowland.

The office should re-open in three to five weeks, Spratlin said. In the meantime, a mobile office manned by one employee at a time is parked beside the post office.

The mobile office, which had to be brought in from Atlanta, hasn’t been visited frequently so far, Spratlin said, but it can accept letters and packages and sell postage. P.O. box services have been transferred to the Edgewood post office at 2638 Two Notch Road, he said.

“We apologize for people who have had inconveniences because of this,” Spratlin said.

Spratlin said the Five Points office isn’t one of Columbia’s busiest.

But “customers who do business there love their post office,” he said. “They don’t want to go somewhere else if they don’t have to.

Spratlin said the Five Points office was one of three in his district to suffer flooding damage. Another was a small office in Sumter County and a third was in Eastover in lower Richland County, he said.

U.S. Postal Service customers with questions or concerns can call 1-800-275-8777.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 7:48 PM with the headline "Flooding knocks Five Points post office out of commission."